Malaysia, Singapore.

A woman abandons her husband and children to fight for the communist guerrillas in the Malaysian jungle.

A man in the twilight of his life tries to justify his family's disintegration.

A son reconstructs the past of a mother he never knew.

A Malaysian journalist returns to her homeland to investigate a massacre ignored for 20 years.

A teacher is arrested and imprisoned, accused of being a Marxist conspirator.

They are all bound by a connection they cannot ignore. What happens when what divides us also unites us? No conflict has only one interpretation, and Jeremy Tiang's novel shows us this through the voices of a family navigating the turbulence of a period of violence, political arrests, and social upheaval, whose deep scars mirror those of Singapore after its traumatic independence.

Winner of the Singapore National Literature Prize.